OPERATIONAL GAMES AS A METHOD OF STRUGGLE OF THE OUN SPECIAL DIVISIONS AGAINST THE SOVIET SPECIAL SERVICES IN WESTERN UKRAINE (1944 – THE BEGINNING OF THE 1950s)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24919/2519-058X.23.258959

Abstract

The aim of the study is implementation of scientific and documentary reconstruction of an essence and appointment of operational games by the Security Service (SB) of the OUN (S. Bandera) in the 1940s aimed against the Soviet secret service as part of the confrontation of the armed national and independent underground in Western Ukraine with the Soviet security forces. The Research Methodology. The authors based the study on the structural and systemic approach of the analysis in order to identify the structural and functional role of the operational games in the system of secret confrontation of the OUN. The historical and analytical, historical and genetic and historical and comparative methods as well as the method of documentary verification have been used. The scientific novelty is based on the fact that for the first time the tasks, mechanism, forms and methods of using the operative game as the highest form of operative art by the OUN special unit have been comprehensively analyzed taking into account the wide range of archival sources and in the context of the OUN’s confrontation with the Soviet secret services, also the fundamental types of accomplished operational measures of the OUN special units have been and evaluated on the basic of their effectiveness. The Conclusion. It is a proved fact that during the post-war period the level of reconnaissance activities of the OUN special forces increased qualitatively, their direction was the desire to create their own informational and reconnaissance positions in the enemy’s secret services and their intelligence apparatus. Complex operational games with the Soviet state security agencies testified to the SB OUN attempt to master the classical methods of operative art of the secret services. The main way of conducting the games was considered to be the “voluntary” immersion of one’s own informants in state security units (usually at the local level) according to the legend developed by the SB, with the further strengthening of trust in them, expansion of their intelligence capabilities. The tasks of those games included the identification of operatives-agents and agents of state security in the ranks of the underground; promotion of misinformation about the state of affairs in the underground; extortion and neutralization, or the use of “without knowledge” or through the recruitment of confidants of state security agencies for the development of the game itself; identification of tasks and plans of operational counterintelligence measures in relation to the underground; study of forms and methods of intelligence and operational work of state security bodies.

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2022-06-27

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